December 7, 2009

A New Rug Hooking Project: Swing



I seem to be a lot of titles recently describing an action: Circling, Lean, Floating, Tilted, Cascading, and now Swing. I could also title this Pink Moon, but there's something about inferring motion that adds to the composition; I seem to be thinking of motion when I'm sketching. This will be a 20 x 10 inch work, going back to the long rectangular format which has fascinated me. I've just begun a painting with the same dimensions, which I'll post tomorrow.





Before doing the sketch above, I rummaged through my dyed swatches, as I often do for color inspiration. I don't often use pale colors in my work––there was Pale Pair and Floating Squares––so thought it would be interesting to do so with this piece. The swatches gave me the color ideas for the sketch. The dyed wool for the project is below, the two lower colors will be the shapes, and the upper ones the background.


7 comments:

  1. this is going to be a nice one Altoon!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with Mona! I'm looking forward to seeing how the work progresses!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the interest! I love starting off on the adventure of new projects, both painting and rug hooking.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Such soft colors without being pale or sugary!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm glad you like the colors, Linda. There's something about dyed wool that's appealing, no matter what color. But to be specific: to get the colors more subtle––less sugary––I added a bit of the color complements to each; to the pink, which I'd warmed with some yellow, a bit of green; to the apricot-yellow some blue. I rarely use color as it comes out of the dye package.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, this will be fun to watch come into being, since hooking is one of my favorite fiber formats. Your colors are lovely, will you tell in a future blog what you used to dye them? Carry on!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Julia, I use Cushing acid dyes; the main colors for this project were pink, nugget gold and a touch of silver gray green for the pink cloth; maize, a bit of nugget gold and apricot, with some of the pink mixture for the gold; the greenish was silver gray green with some nugget gold; the pale green on top used bronze. Then I might have added bits of one dye mix to another or other bits of color. I pretty much wing it when color mixing and don't take notes. My years as a painter have come in very handy when mixing dye colors.

    ReplyDelete